![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellenkushnerA friend in a locked post writes about different languages' words for love and friend - made me reply thus:
There is a beautiful word in Dutch (which an old flame taught me) that means you feel a love for something so intense that - and this is pretty much what the King James Bible used, too! - your bowels twist within you. From the way he used it, it's less about romantic love than that sudden wrench you get over a beloved child, or a landscape . . . Nevertheless - interesting to know how English limits us (now that our bowels no longer yearn like they used to in 1605)!
(And, yes, I've forgotten the actual word - though I can still see his face and eloquent gestures in the restaurant candlelight . . . Anyone know it?)
There is a beautiful word in Dutch (which an old flame taught me) that means you feel a love for something so intense that - and this is pretty much what the King James Bible used, too! - your bowels twist within you. From the way he used it, it's less about romantic love than that sudden wrench you get over a beloved child, or a landscape . . . Nevertheless - interesting to know how English limits us (now that our bowels no longer yearn like they used to in 1605)!
(And, yes, I've forgotten the actual word - though I can still see his face and eloquent gestures in the restaurant candlelight . . . Anyone know it?)
Re: The Song of Songs
Date: 2006-08-20 12:38 am (UTC)I think that's a bit more accurate than "heart", meself.